Buyers and sellers use a variety of techniques to ensure goods and services meet their mutual expectations. However, traditional procurement systems have been proven to be error prone, labor intensive, and costly operations. For example, often times, when a buyer is looking to purchase a batch of articles, a buyer might negotiate terms for the purchase prior to making the purchasing decision. The negotiation allows the buyer and seller to ensure the articles and terms (e.g., price, quantity, delivery conditions, etc.) will meet any specific requirements. As is generally known, it is advantageous to consider many alternative buyers/sellers when negotiating terms. A larger number of buyers and sellers available, for example, to bid on articles of manufacture, usually leads to a more efficient matching of requirements between buyers and sellers (e.g., getting the best deal). Traditional buying and selling mediums, such as auctions, catalog based purchasing, and selling, and the like, do not always facilitate the most efficient matching of requirements. Alternatively, when prior inspection of an article is not possible or practical, the seller may provide the buyer with specifications describing the properties of the articles. The recent ascendancy of electronic commerce provides a means of avoiding, or at least reducing, the problems presented by the use of traditional buying and selling mediums.
In many respects, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies have largely eliminated the most labor intensive and costly portions of the buying and selling type commerce operations (e.g., the use of mass mailings, printed specifications, catalogs, updating preprinted product information, etc.). However, many of the old problems still remain. For example, the fact that a buyer may find a seller from whom to purchase a batch of articles “on-line”, does not change the fact that the buyer might not be aware of a more favorable purchase opportunity from a different seller prior to making the purchasing decision. Even when negotiation and/or inspection of all articles from all possible sellers is not practical, the buyer would find very helpful a comprehensive system for gathering offers from a large, widely distributed number of sellers.
To avoid these problems, a variety of electronic commerce facilitating schemes were developed. One such scheme involved the use of business-to-business buying and selling exchanges implemented on the Internet. The term “electronic commerce” or “e-commerce” originally evolved from remote forms of electronic shopping to mean all aspects of business and market processes enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. E-commerce is a rapidly growing field, and is generally understood to mean doing business on-line or selling and buying products and services through Web (e.g., Internet based) storefronts or through other similar distributed computer networks. In general, electronic commerce is substantially similar to the more traditional catalog based commerce schemes. The business-to-business e-commerce exchanges, or simply “B2B exchanges” have evolved to focus on the specific needs and requirements of buying and selling between businesses.
As the use of B2B exchanges has proliferated, the implementation of electronic commerce auctions has become increasingly common. The use of electronic commerce facilitated auctions, or simply electronic auctions, has become a preferred method of efficiently matching buyers and sellers of goods and services. Electronic auctions provide a convenient means for aggregating large numbers of buyers or sellers and efficiently disseminating market information among them.
Auctions are different from traditional catalog based commerce schemes. Auctions generally aggregate buyers or sellers to purchase or sell items/services through the respective submission of competitive bids. Generally, the most competitive bid is designated the winner of the auction. For example, in an auction amongst multiple competing buyers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the most money for the specified item or service. In an auction amongst multiple competing sellers, the most competitive bid is usually the bid offering the specified item or service for the lowest price.
Thus, buyers and sellers participating in an auction compete with one another on the basis of the terms of their bids. Auctioneers have an interest in making the bidding process as competitive as possible to effect the most efficient matching of requirements between sellers and buyers (e.g., getting the best deal). Large numbers of buyers or sellers competitively trying to outbid one another usually leads to the most favorable terms.
Buyers and sellers have an interest in ascertaining the competitiveness of their respective bids with respect to the conditions/rules of a given auction. For example, in a highly competitive auction for the purchase of a specified item (e.g., a batch of automobile parts), many competing bids are submitted from the various competing buyers. The auction has specified time limits. The auction begins at a specified time and ends at a specified time. Theses times can be specified by the seller. The buyers try to win the auction on the basis of the relative competitiveness of their respective bid. The buyers may try to judge interest in the specified good or service in order to determine the parameters of a new bid. Generally, buyers attempt to win the auction for the good or service without excessively overbidding. The sellers try to encourage the auction, soliciting successive bids from the buyers, with each bid being “better” for the seller than the previous bid. Generally, sellers attempt to encourage new bids from the buyers that are significantly better than previous bids. If the auction is highly competitive, the status of the bids for the specified item, as they are made, is important information regarding respective chances of a particular buyer being designated the winner of the auction. For example, buyers may judge the end time of the auction with respect to the competitiveness of the auction, attempting to make a final winning bid just before the conclusion.
There is a problem, however, in that the use of electronic commerce facilitated auctions creates problems for the buyers and sellers with respect to tracking the status of the bidding process. Electronic commerce is generally enabled by wide area communications networks, namely, the Internet and the World Wide Web based network technologies. As such, for example, auction participants are typically coupled to the auction event (e.g., exchange, etc.) via a web browser client communicating with auction event servers over the Internet. As is common with Internet and World Wide Web based technologies, there exists a significant amount of lag in two way communication between the electronic commerce exchange hosting the auction and the buyer's web browser. For example, as new bids are entered, an auction participant determines the status her respective bid by hitting “refresh” in the browser GUI to query the exchange server for the status of all the bids. This is often the only way a winning bidder can ensure he/she is still in possession of the winning bid. There is a certain amount of lag in the bid update process attributable to the Internet and World Wide Web network technologies.
Hence, buyers often take advantage of the lag due to the Internet and World Wide Web technologies by making frivolous bids in an attempt to win the auction by as small an amount as possible over competing buyers. For example, at times near the end of the auction, a buyer might continuously submit new bids, each bid being slightly higher than the previous high bid, in an attempt to take advantage of the lag. The buyer can steal the auction from genuine bidders by concealing interest until the closing moments of the auction since, due to the lag, the status of the bids is not efficiently disseminated to all auction participants. This leads to a large degree of uncertainty at the end of the auction as to which of the auction participants has won the auction. For example, several participants might believe they are in possession of the winning bid only to find that at some instant prior to the close of the auction they were outbid by some frivolous amount (e.g., one dollar). The seller has no means of ascertaining the emergence of such frivolous bidders since the winner of the auction is usually determined by the high bid at the expiration of the allotted time.
Another problem is the fact that the seller cannot alter terms of the auction dynamically as the auction is under way. Arbitrarily changing parameters of the auction after the start of the auction risks confusion among the buyers. Although a seemingly sufficient amount of time may be allocated (e.g., several days), the seller often finds that serious bids and serious competition only emerges in the closing moments of the auction.
Thus, what is required is a solution for controlling frivolous bidding activity. The required solution should be user configurable in accordance with the circumstances of the auction and the particular requirements of the user. The required solution should reduce the inefficiencies associated with lag. What is further required is a solution for dynamically altering the terms of the auction without risk of confusion to the auction participants. Additionally, the required solution should be compatible with widely used electronic commerce enabling technology. The present invention provides a novel solution to the above requirements.